Earth 801 Syllabus (Spring 2021)

Earth 801: Computation and Visualization in the Earth Sciences

This syllabus is divided into several sections. It is essential that you read the entire document as well as the material covered in the Course Orientation. Together these serve as our course "contract."

Instructor

Dr. Eliza Richardson
Associate Professor
Department of Geosciences

The Pennsylvania State University
409 Deike Building
University Park, PA 16802

• Phone: (814) 863-2507
• Email: eliza@psu.edu
• Faculty website
• Office Hours: I will be available for office visits, phone calls, or online interaction most weekdays. Please contact me to make an appointment if you want to be sure to meet on a given day/time.

---

Course Overview

EARTH 801: Computation and Visualization in the Earth Sciences
Prerequisites: None

EARTH 801 will be conducted entirely on the World Wide Web. There will be no set class meeting times, but you will be required to complete weekly assignments. There are 7 procedural lessons that will be completed at a rate of approximately 1 week per lesson. You develop procedural programming skills in a programming language designed for visual arts and visualization while exploring Earth science topics. In particular, you will learn and practice digital graphics capabilities in order to render Earth science concepts that are otherwise difficult to visualize due to complicated space and time scales. Both spatial and object visualization skills are key to success in the Earth sciences; you will build an awareness of these skills and practice them with an eye to being able to teach them to your own secondary school students.

In this course, you will interact with large, open, freely-available data sets by collecting, plotting, and analyzing them using a variety of computational methods. You will therefore be ready to teach your own secondary school students a range of Next Generation Science Standard skills involving data collecting, manipulation, analysis, and plotting.

You will also read and discuss current research regarding the teaching, learning, and evaluation of visualization skills, as well as multiple external representations of science concepts. For the course’s final project, you will apply your theoretical knowledge and practical skills by developing a teaching object for use with your own secondary science students.

This course is an elective in the Master of Education in Earth Sciences program. The program is designed specifically for credentialed secondary school Earth science or general science teachers, who are able to study only part-time and at a distance. It is offered exclusively through Penn State World Campus.

What I Expect of You

On average, most students spend eight hours per week working on course assignments. Your workload may be more or less depending on your prior experience with computing and data visualization.

I have worked hard to make this the most effective and convenient educational experience possible. The Internet is still a novel learning environment, but in one sense it is no different than a traditional college class: how much and how well you learn is ultimately up to you. You will succeed if you are diligent about keeping up with the class schedule and if you take advantage of opportunities to communicate with me, as well as with your fellow students.

Specific learning objectives for each lesson and project are detailed within each lesson.

---

Course Goals and Learning Objectives

Course Goals: You will read recently published papers dealing with object and spatial visualization skills, how to evaluate the worth of a still graphic or animation in explaining technical concepts, as well as how best to organize large data sets in ways that can be best interpreted visually. The major goal is two-fold: you will read and discuss papers to explore the theories, while at the same time put those theories into practice by learning to code a little bit.

Lesson 1 Learning Objectives:

• Become familiar with the expectations of this course.
• Practice interacting and discussing in the online environment.
• install Processing and successfully write a simple program
• Write a program that plots an assortment of shapes to the screen

Lesson 2 Learning Objectives:

• write programs involving loops
• write programs involving a variety of colors
• write programs that use variables
• Become conversant with cognitive scientists’ theories of object visualization v. spatial visualization.
• Read and discuss papers involving how practitioners apply object and spatial visualization skills in the Earth sciences

Lesson 3 Learning Objectives:

• write programs using if - else if - else structures
• write programs that simulate animation
• Discuss teaching and learning strategies to incorporate data visualization skills into secondary science educational settings.

Lesson 4 Learning Objectives:

• write programs that involve user interaction
• write programs that use functions
• Explore theoretical frameworks for deciding how to evaluate the ability of a graphic to explain a concept in the sciences.
• Read and discuss papers involving teaching spatial and creative ability, how to measure the worth of a graphic in teaching Earth science

Lesson 5 Learning Objectives:

• write programs that involve manipulation of text and typography
• write programs that involve scaling, translation, and rotation of objects and text
• Discuss teaching and learning strategies to incorporate animations of scientific concepts into secondary science education settings.

Lesson 6 Learning Objectives:

• write programs using a 3D renderer
• write programs that use externally-generated images
• save output of programs to a file

Lesson 7 Learning Objectives:

• practice simple text file manipulation and file structure navigation with unix commands
• practice writing programs that use data arrays
• Import a data file and analyze its contents
• Practice the cognitive skills necessary to organize a set of data and visualize it in a way that trends and relationships may be easily evaluated.
• Explore educational psychology theoretical frameworks about how to evaluate animations v. still graphics when teaching technical content.
• Read and discuss papers involving the use of animations in teaching Earth science

Small Projects Learning Objectives:

• use skills built up in lessons 1-7 to create animations of Earth science concepts and visually interesting and engaging ways of presenting Earth science data
• Read and discuss papers about graphical excellence and high-resolution data graphics

Capstone Learning Objectives:

• create a teaching object that employs a program you wrote or its output to teach an Earth science concept to another audience.

---

Required Course Material

All materials needed for this course are presented on our course website and in the learning management system or are freely available from the internet. In order to take this course, you need to have an active Penn State Access Account user ID and password (used to access the online course resources). If you have any questions about obtaining or activating your Penn State Access Account, please contact the World Campus.

---

Assignments and Grading

EARTH 801 will rely upon a variety of methods to assess and evaluate student learning, including:

• Required participation in online discussion forums, so I can gauge your progress and ability to articulate key concepts. I will assign weekly readings and ask you to discuss and debate the significance of these readings within the larger framework of the current lesson's topic. The discussions will also be a venue for you to get help or give help when performing the data analyses.
• Programming activities
• Two small projects
• A capstone project that will be used to evaluate your knowledge and skills through the production of a learning module that you, in turn, will be able to use to teach course concepts to your own students.

You will earn a grade that reflects the extent to which you achieve the course learning objectives listed above. Grades are assigned by the percentage of possible points earned in each lesson's activities. Below is a breakdown of each lesson's value as a percentage of the total course grade.

Grading breakdown for Earth 801

Assignment	Percentage of Grade
Orientation (based on participation)	5%
Lessons 1-7 programs	30%
Discussion participation	25%
Small Projects	25%
Capstone Project	15%

I will use the grades tool in Canvas to keep track of your grades. You can see your grades, too, by clicking the Grades link in the Canvas environment.

Overall course grades will be determined as follows. Percentages refer to the proportion of all possible points earned.

Earth 801 Grading Scale

Letter Grade	Percentages
A	90–100%
A-	87.5–89.9%
B+	85–87.4%
B	80–84.9%
B-	77.5–79.9%
C+	75–77.4%
C	70–74.9%
D	60–69.9%
F	<60%
X	Unsatisfactory (student did not participate)

---

---

Hot Tips for Success in EARTH 801

Participate

Plenty of students who have never taken an online course worry about feeling isolated. In fact, past experience shows that it is easier to feel isolated in a great big lecture hall where nobody wants to draw attention to themselves. This class is not enormous and you will find that regular participation in the discussion boards will not only make you part of the community of this course but will also allow you to organize your thoughts and logically process the science you'll be doing. I conceptualize the discussion forums the same way I do weekly lab meetings with grad students. Having to explain things to your peers is a great way to crystallize your own thinking about a topic. It is also the perfect platform for giving and receiving feedback about your scientific approach or your teaching approach.

Do the work on time

Please believe that I understand the time constraints placed on you. I have five kids, ranging in age (as of this writing) from 26 years to 8 years. I know how hard it is to work, study, be a parent, and occasionally still try to stay up for a West Coast baseball game on TV. My suggestion is to treat this like a class that has actual hours, and to set aside specific periods of time each week to do the work, think, and participate in the discussions. If you find you are falling behind, do not silently suffer and try to rush through the work. You must let me know of any difficulties so that I can help you! Unforeseen emergencies excluded, my late policy is that you need to discuss with me any potential problems regarding being on time before assignments are due.

Don't lie, cheat, or step on people's feet

You are an adult. You are a graduate student. Cheating and plagiarizing is a waste of your time and mine. If you are unsure what constitutes cheating and plagiarizing, then please review our course policy on Academic Integrity located below.

---

Course Policies